


We're Still Friends Right?

by michitariru



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-23
Updated: 2019-09-23
Packaged: 2020-10-26 15:37:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20744585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/michitariru/pseuds/michitariru
Summary: Yuri had an unexpected nightmare where one of his worst realities came true.





	We're Still Friends Right?

**Author's Note:**

> One of the only drabbles I wrote during my time in the Yuri on Ice fandom but I still wanted to publish it here nonetheless.

Yuri didn’t usually have trouble sleeping at night, especially after a normal day of skating practice. Dreaming wasn’t normally an issue either, especially on an equally mundane off-season day. Every aspect of the day had been normal. Breakfast, homeschooling classes, homework, practice at the rink, physical therapy afterward, dinner, more homework, and talking to Otabek on Skype from dinner onward. That was their normal time to chat most days, and things had been fine as they talked. So what reason would Yuri have to worry about any of it? 

Plenty apparently. 

If there was one thing Yuri was not still fully accustomed to, it was an emotional connection with people his own age. Sure there were people close enough in age he was _forced_ to socialize with due to skating, but Yuri wouldn’t consider them his friends by any stretch of the imagination. Just Otabek. 

But that was exactly the problem. Not that there was a problem with his friendship with the Kazakh skater, they did indeed have more in common than Yuri initially thought, and a solid friendship had grown and solidified between the two teenagers because of those things in common. Otabek never really spoke of any friends back home in Almaty, but that didn’t mean they don’t or never existed. Otabek was, as far as the rest of the competitive skating world knew, as private as they come. Yuri becoming his friend had been world class news as far as their fans went, on both sides. 

All that aside, having Otabek close but not _in person_ close had become the norm, and though he admittedly wouldn’t mind seeing the older in person more often, they couldn’t exactly just hop a plane whenever they felt like, unless (at least in Yuri’s case anyway) they wanted to get a verbal lashing from their coach. So texting, Skype messaging, and Skype calls were it a vast majority of the time. 

But what if Otabek got tired of it eventually? He wasn’t one to go seeking out friends on his own (beyond Yuri anyway), but what if he grew bored of the long distance aspect in time and their Skype sessions slowly grew fewer and farther in between? 

Apparently that worry was indeed festering somewhere in the depths of Yuri’s psyche that was still being discovered while having an emotional connection to bring it out to begin with. Because while Yuri was unconscious a dream was playing out in his mind like a movie he could not pause…..

> _ He was at the post Grand Prix final banquet again. Yakov and Lillia there as per usual. Viktor was nearby standing beside Yuuri, among the other senior division skaters whom Yuri was with recognizing faces, but not on a first name basis. Everyone around him was conversing, socializing, laughing, and just **enjoying** themselves. But there was one face he could not pick out from the small mass in the room. What was meant to be a smack to Viktor’s arm to help him locate Otabek went completely through the older Russian’s arm as if he had dematerialized somehow. Like a ghost. _
> 
> _ Trying again to touch the older, Yuri was having the same issue as before. Then reaching to try and push Yuuri, which was also being no help. _
> 
> _ It was an odd feeling physically, but emotionally not so much. If he really wanted to get deep, this was almost a physical equivalent of how Yuri had distanced himself from near everyone in the skating community; the physical manifestation of his emotional state when out in public with the others. _
> 
> _ Changing tactics and pulling out his cell phone to simply text Otabek instead, Yuri’s fingers faltered when he noticed the time stamp on the last sent text message from himself. _
> 
> _ August…….. _
> 
> _ ’**WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?**’ was the only thought that crossed Yuri’s mind as he scrolled upward and sifted through what was apparently their last text conversation. Almost **four** months ago. It had been short, curt, not much to say from either party. Pulling up the Skype app, Yuri saw similar timestamps on the almost only window on his recent conversations tab._
> 
> _ September……._
> 
> _ Now he was really fucking lost. Panic slowly seeped into his legs, then his arms, then inward to his torso. Why the hell hadn’t he and Otabek talked in months? It was one thing to go a few days without during the peak of the competition season when training was at its most rigorous, but this was downright fucked up. Some of the last words on either platform from his supposed best friend hadn’t fully registered in Yuri’s mind, but it was probably blocking out the specific gist that they were no longer best friends, or even friends at all. _
> 
> _ Suddenly yanked back to the scene around him, a voice finally snaps Yuri out of his stupor and he spots Otabek entering the party and taking his usual spot off to the side, until a skater he didn’t recognize chatted him up and Otabek actually responded after a long moment and a new conversation began. Frozen in place as if he almost couldn’t compute what he was watching, the first emotion that coursed through Yuri he couldn’t identify (jealousy), but the second one was a lot easier to identify: disappointment. An unfamiliar emotion to the young Russian, but not something he couldn’t fully recognize and acknowledge was freely flowing through him. That was supposed to be **his** spot beside Otabek, off to the side having a private conversation. Instead this total fucking stranger had taken **his** damn spot. _
> 
> _ No…….they’d taken his place._

As soon as that realization dawned on Yuri, the scene around him was dematerializing around him as if melting away, and suddenly Yuri’s eyes were flying open and it took him a few seconds to realize that he was still safely tucked in bed in the exact same position he’d fallen asleep in that night, Potya still tucked up behind his knees. 

Sitting up and petting the displaced and displeased cat to keep her from jumping down off the bed, Yuri’s mind reeled with what he just thought he had experienced. It had been so fucking real: the sounds around him, the clinking of glasses, the laughter of skaters, the agonizing feeling of being replaced. It had been so goddamn real.

The fact that it had felt so realistic was what scared Yuri the most, as if it was completely plausible and not completely improbable of happening. Hands shook ever so slightly as the blond patted around the edge of his mattress for where he had left his phone plugged in to the wall for the night, yanking the cord from the phone jack with more force than had been necessary and swiftly tossing it from the bed. Pulling up the familiar screen of text messages, this time they told a much different story. The time stamp was from that very night, just a couple hours prior. Their normal goodnight, promise to try and talk the following day, and wishing good luck for the next day of training. But even reading and re-reading those text messages over, Yuri couldn’t shake the idle wonder that if this was a fucked up secondary version, or continuation of the dream he thought he just woke up from. 

Typing out a short message, Yuri’s fingers weren’t working as they normally did, the barely there shaking was still present as he contemplated the possible responses to come. He didn’t want to think about the possibility of seeing with his own two conscious eyes that Otabek no longer wanted him as a friend. The idea made the Russian’s heart hurt too much. 

But all the same, that text message was still sent anyway. 

text: [ hey. ] 

text: [ we’re still friends right? ]


End file.
